Einstein’s Too Smart To Be On Twitter
January 23, 2010 by Bonnie Boots
Filed under Twitter
ALL the experts are on Twitter, right? So you have to be, too, right? Wrong on both counts.
Last week I was considering attending a trade seminar for owners of digital publishing businesses, in particular because Corey Perlman will be one of the speakers. Perlman is well known for his book eBoot Camp: Proven Internet Marketing Techniques To Grow Your Business. He’s conducted more than 200 eBoot Camp workshops all over the world and is considered an expert at teaching small businesses owners how to effectively use the internet to market their goods and services.
Surely such an internet expert jumped on the Twitter bandwagon early and has been tweeting ever since, right? Wrong. When I checked on Twitter, he wasn’t listed.
I told this story to a new client who came to me in part because he butted heads with his last business coach. That coach pushed this internationally known medical expert into doing daily postings on Twitter and Facebook, telling him “You must! All the experts do it.”
My client complained that he considered it a waste of time and an annoyance. “It puts me in a bad mood every time I stop to do it,” he complained. “And I can’t believe my business rests on something so inconsequential as tweeting.”
I told him I agreed. There’s simply no sense putting him in a bad mood once a day by forcing him to stop and tweet. Not when his time is so valuable.
I offered to put an assistant to work writing daily tweets for him, but this client is having none of it. He had Twitter shoved down his throat and now he’s through. And I’m fine with that.
As a business coach, my job is to find the most effective ways for each of my clients to market themselves on the internet.
With so many ways available, one tool or another isn’t going to make or break any business. I strive to guide self-employed people into using the tools they’ll enjoy most, because those are the tools they’ll use most often. And in marketing, persistence pays off.
If you’re forcing yourself to use Twitter because you’ve been told ALL the experts do it, give yourself a break. You don’t need to be Einstein to figure out that if you don’t like using Twitter, it’s probably costing you more time and energy than it’s worth.
P.S. Perlman’s blog this week contained news that he’s now on Twitter. But I’ll be surprised if it’s the expert himself, and not an assistant, that’s texting in those tweets.
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email2friend
Hi Bonnie,
first, I hope i see you at the seminar – I’m assuming you meant the one in Miami? Should be a great event! Just to clarify, I have been on twitter for quite some time. you can find me at twitter.com/coreyperlman and twitter.com/ebootcamp. having said that, i agree with you that twitter is, in now way, a necessity for any business. people should give it a shot and see if its right for them. i’ve seen lots of people do well with twitter and many people just get annoyed by it. as far as having assistants tweet for us, i do all of my own tweeting. but i’m not against having others tweet for you as long as they know your business.
thanks for the post and I’ll look forward to meeting you in the future!
all the best,
corey perlman
Thanks for the correction, Corey. I didn’t find you on Twitter when I first searched your name, but then I sometimes hear from subscribers saying they didn’t find me when they searched my name. I assume it’s the result of Twitter being too busy. It turns out I won’t be able to make the Miami event, but I’ll be looking for your tweets from it!
Bonnie Boots